Nathalie Szabo, daughter of Sodexo’s founder leads Lenôtre and is looking to accelerate growth

Le Journal du Dimanche – April 1^st, 2012

Nathalie Szabo, daughter of Sodexo’s founder, leads Lenôtre, the prestige brand just swallowed up by her family’s company

The daughter of Sodexo founder Pierre Bellon, displays the joviality of her curves. She welcomes visitors at the Lenôtre brand’s crown jewel, the Pré Catelan restaurant, nestled in the Bois de Boulogne forest on the edge of Paris. In acquiring the luxury caterer in September, Sodexo added another famous address to the already long list of sites managed through its Prestige business, including the Lido cabaret, the Eiffel Tower, the Bateaux Parisiens, the Marseilles Velodrome and the Puy du Fou. Lenôtre also added 100 million euros in additional revenues for the Sodexo subsidiary (500 million euros in annual revenues and employing 3,500 people). Nathalie Szabo, 48, is looking to accelerate growth, launching a new concept of catering boutiques under the Lenôtre brand in the coming days.

She was two when Pierre Bellon created Sodexo, a company that today generates 16 billion euros in revenues and employs more than 410,000 people around the world. For a long time, occupied with the responsibilities of motherhood for an extended family (she raised three children and two nephews), she held a modest commercial sales position. Before rising through the ranks at her own pace. "I always had three bosses,” she smiles. “Sodexo’s Corporate segment, Sodexo France and Sodexo Group."

The only Bellon child to hold an operational post, she meets up with her father, brother and three sisters at Board meetings as well as on vacations, near the family home in Marseilles, or abroad. Once a year, the patriarch transports his tribe to the other side of the world. "This year, it was Vietnam,” she says, “and there was almost a mutiny before two days at the beach were finally added to the program.” With her, the famous pastry brand is in good company: the owner appreciates fine cuisine. For her 18^th birthday, she welcomed her friends to a buffet covered with cakes she had baked herself. And she served her internship for her business school studies in a patissier, Au Framboisier. "I worked with whipped cream all day long – what fun!"

Worldwide development
Today, she works with an armada of chefs, waiters, sailors aboard boats on the Seine and dancers and technicians at the cabaret. Like her father, she is strongly implicated in management issues and participates in a working group that promotes the advancement of women. "It's a 20-member group of female managers from several countries, including, of course, the United States, which is the company’s largest market, ahead of France," says Nathalie Szabo. Sodexo Prestige is looking to feed its fires. "We need to develop in amusement parks, zoos and museums around the world. And pursue acquisitions." The digestion of Lenôtre was all sweetness. In the Bois de Boulogne pavilion of the three Michelin star Pré Catelan, Nathalie Szabo refrains from impromptu visits to the kitchen of celebrity chef Frederic Anton. But the desserts hold no secrets for her.